Solipsism, as much as skillfulness, is what the contributors to this year's collection seem to have most in common. ``A good essay for me is an essay that pleases me,'' guest editor Kincaid (Lucy, 1990, etc.) declares in her introduction, setting the pace for the overweening, self-indulgent egos that parade through the rest of the volume, coedited by series editor Atwan. The title of William H. Gass's otherwise murky essay clearly states their overarching theme: ``The Art of Self.'' The problem is not this time-honored topic, of course. Rather, it is the excessive narcissism that many of these authors exhibit, whether explicitly discussing themselves or just drifting from some other subject into navel-gazing. We expect nothing else from Harold Brodkey, whose first dispatch from his struggle with AIDS appears here. Maxine Kumin disappoints, however, with a celebration of vegetable gardening that fairly oozes self-satisfaction. Most egregious is Edward Hoagland's apologia for his adulteries, which masquerades as an elegy for his late wife. Some of the autobiographical pieces do manage to avoid blithe egocentrism. Tobias Wolff and Henry Louis Gates Jr., elaborating their already well-known midlife memoirs, keep the focus on their families and friends. Grace Paley sketches the women whom she met when she spent a week in a Greenwich Village jail for protesting the Vietnam war. Fine efforts come from Joseph Brodsky and Elaine Scarry: Brodsky's record of his ongoing fascination with the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius shows him confronting, rather than simply emulating, a prototypical imperial self, while Scarry argues persuasively that the ends of centuries bring a heightening of poetic consciousness. On the evidence of this inconsistent tenth volume, however, such vaunted fin-de-siäcle magic seems to be failing for essays.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-395-69184-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
An efficient guide to improving the effectiveness of any online marketing effort.
A trio of digital-marketing experts explains the huge gap between the number of people who visit websites in response to online campaigns and the number who become customers–and offers a well-tested approach to achieve better results.
Early Internet entrepreneurs counted "eyeballs" to determine whether their offerings were successful. Soon, however, online marketers realized that visitors viewing their banner ads and paid search listings were only part of the story–and a minor one at that. Then came the ascendance of "click-throughs" as the benchmark for effective Internet marketing. More recently, however, digital marketing has moved beyond merely counting clicks on display ads or hyperlinks in e-mail campaigns. Today, marketers worry about converting those prospects into sales leads or actual customers. That’s where post-click marketing comes in and where this informative how-to provides the answers. The authors, all veteran online marketing consultants, focus on methods for improving the dismal conversion rate–estimated at a paltry three percent–of people who click through to the average online marketer’s landing page. Their core technique relies on selling paths or conversion paths, which are three- to five-page series of screens that attempt to guide more clickers to become buyers. The difference between a conversion path and a conventional landing page is that, unlike a typical landing page where a web surfer can go in almost any direction, the conversion path presents the visitor with a set of carefully selected options. By offering visitors quicker, simpler, cheaper–or even free–choices, the post-click marketer personalizes and improves the online-selling process. The book consists largely of previously written blog posts, articles and other documents the authors produced over the last decade. While the material could theoretically seem rehashed, the inclusion instead adds genuine-feeling context. This intriguing title is divided into short segments–improving readability–and includes visual aids. Novices and marketing pros will likely find the authors’ approach convincing.
An efficient guide to improving the effectiveness of any online marketing effort.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-2185-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Eight history-laden essays on bizarre beliefs, fears, and behaviors, plus two additional pieces on several unfortunate human anomalies—all serving as reminders of human gullibility, mendacity, and cruelty. Bondeson, a London-based physician who specializes in rheumatology and internal medicine and has a Ph.D. in experimental medicine, appears to have a genuine love for the weird: Many of the illustrations in this odd little work bear the note ``from the author's collection.'' Those fascinated by tabloid journalism's sensational reports of spontaneous human combustion or the birth of nonhuman creatures to human mothers will, however, probably be disappointed by Bondeson's rather scholarly approach. He traces the rise and decline of beliefs in these and other strange phenomena, reveals the motives of the parties involved, and offers a medical explanation where appropriate. Among his topics are the fear of premature burial and the extraordinary mechanical precautions taken by some to avoid that fate, the notion that a race of giants once walked the earth, and the belief in a race of people with tails. Bondeson then dwells on the cases of four unusual individuals whose fate was to be exhibited like sideshow freaks. Today the Hunterian, a London museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, houses the double skull of the Two-Headed Boy of Bengal and the skeletons of the huge Charles Byrne, known as the Irish Giant, and the tiny Caroline Crachami, a dwarf known as the Sicilian Fairy. The mummy of the fourth individual, Julia Pastrana, known as the Ape-Woman for her hairy body and misshapen face, is in a medical museum in Oslo, Norway. With its numerous illustrations of these poor creatures, this in-depth Believe It or Not can be seen as a continuation of the exploitation that marked their lives.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8014-3431-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Cornell Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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